To add to what I wrote in an earlier post, a financial mistake I made was choosing a 5-year ARM instead of a 3-year ARM or a 1-year ARM. I thought interest rates would remain high, if not go higher, back in early 1989 when I bought my co-op apartment. Instead, they dropped quickly throughout 1989 and dropped more in 1990 and 1991. This left me stuck with high mortgage payments in those years instead of declining ones (at least by 1992 had I taken the 3-year ARM) and making little progress in reducing the mortgage principal.
I ended up refinancing the mortgage in 1992, into a 1-year ARM, saving me $200 per month, recovering my closing costs in about 18 months. But the refinancing process was a tough one, as I somewhat reluctantly had to file a complaint against the new lender with the state banking department when the lender tried to change a term of the agreement at the closing AFTER both sides had signed that part of the agreement months earlier.
Thankfully, the lender sold the mortgage to another bank in 1997, 6 months before I paid off the loan. I was glad to be dealing with a different lender during the process of getting a payoff notice and making my final payment in early 1998. I shuddered to think about how the old lender would have given me a hard time going through the payoff process with our tainted relationship. I hade sure to tell the far friendlier reps from the new lender how happy I was with their service, albeit a brief time, with the payoff process and how they made it easy for me.